Cw's Knitting Machine: 1700s Handmade Precision

WILLIAMSBURG — They don't make them like they used to, the old- timers always say.

But even the crustiest old coot might express surprise at the hand-hammered toughness that has preserved one of the most complicated artifacts in Colonial Williamsburg for as much as 250 years.

More unexpected still is the sheer sophistication of this venerable survivor, which is not a piece of antique furniture, nor a piece of heirloom silver, but rather a purely utilitarian contraption made of forged, filed and carefully fitted iron.

Broken down into something approaching a thousand parts, this stocking-frame knitting machine required more than two weeks of disassembly and cleaning - then another week of reassembly - before it was declared ready for a DeWitt Wallace Gallery exhibit scheduled to open in early December.

Even at such an advanced age, however, it wouldn't take more than a little tweaking to put it back on the job that it once performed day in and day out - probably from the time of King George III until the dawn of the Great Depression.

"They were made to be used for a long, long time," says CW mechanical instruments conservator David Blanchfield, who describes the device as one of the most complex pieces he has ever worked on.

"They definitely show the wear and tear of their years, but they just don't wear out."

Acquired by Colonial Williamsburg from an English collector in 1993, the stocking frame reaches back to a revolutionary invention contrived by a Nottinghamshire clergyman at the close of the 16th century.

Reportedly spurred to genius by the incessant click of his wife's knitting needles, William Lee designed a remarkably sophisticated instrument that - over time - proved to be both capable and efficient. It also provided the foundation for one of Western civilization's earliest and most widespread cottage industries.

By the late 18th century, England alone had more than 14,000 such machines - all of them fabricated completely by hand, Blanchfield says. All but a few were rented out to rural cottagers, most of whom knitted at their frames for long hours each day in return for their rent, the cost of their raw material and a bare subsistence income.

"People sat at machines like this for hours on end - and they did it all their lives - so it became second nature," Blanchfield says.

"In return, they got exactly enough money to keep them alive. That's why they would say back then, 'He's as poor as a stockinger.' "

At least one attempt to establish the industry in 18th-century Williamsburg ended in failure. And anyone who answered the newspaper advertisement that attempted to recruit apprentices would have faced a steep learning curve.

Most stockingers, Blanchfield says, learned their craft as children and mastered the demanding motion as they grew older.

Sitting on a wooden frame, they would kick at one of three treadles that drove different parts of the mechanism through its business. They also would use their arms and hands to push sections of the carriage up and down -and in and out - all the while stringing a skein of thread back and forth across a row of some 225 tiny hooked needles.

The process required both strength and attention over long periods of time, Blanchfield says. A skilled operator at the right machine could produce about 40 different kinds of knit fabric.

"You had to use both your feet and both your hands simultaneously," the conservator adds.

"It was all dancing, all singing, all the time."

Making the stocking frame itself was an even more complicated endeavor.

Because of the high level of skill required, most examples came from the shops of smiths who concentrated exclusively on the knitting machine business, says CW mechanical arts curator Jay Gaynor.

These tradesmen, in turn, contracted many of their parts from other sources, uniting the talents of more than a dozen specialists in each completed product.

What resulted was a piece of equipment whose complexity and sophistication might surprise many people today, especially because virtually every part of the stocking frame sprang from tools no more advanced than a hammer, reamer and file.

"The common conception is that 18th-century technology was very crude and unmechanized - and that it lacked precision," Gaynor says.

"But as this shows, it could be very sophisticated and very precise. This is an ingeniously conceived, skillfully made piece of technology."

Peter Ross, master of the Colonial Williamsburg blacksmith shop, attributes that widespread misconception to the post-Victorian belief in the value of industrial standardization.

In today's world, he says, interchangeable parts are often mistaken as an indication of technical prowess.

It didn't take him long, however, to see that the foundation's stocking frame was fabricated to exceptionally close tolerances. Anything else would have made it impossible for the nearly 700 elaborately interlocked jacks, sinkers and needles to do their work.